


my friends, my friends forgive me

by ladanse



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Gen, LEIA IS MY QUEEN, consolidating holes between pt and ot, honestly im sorry, ish, leia's character, this is a result of me having feelings and deciding y'all needed to have feelings too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:46:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7870759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladanse/pseuds/ladanse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bail has never tried to outrun his ghosts. He is an Organa and an Antilles and the husband of the Queen of Alderaan; he does not run from anything.</p><p>But, sometimes. Sometimes his ghosts pop up and stare him in the face like his life is a cheap horror holofilm, and he cannot help but be taken aback.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my friends, my friends forgive me

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" because I hate myself and love angst  
> poor bail, honestly

Bail has never tried to outrun his ghosts. He is an Organa and an Antilles and the husband of the Queen of Alderaan; he does not run from anything.

 

But, sometimes. Sometimes his ghosts pop up and stare him in the face like his life is a cheap horror holofilm, and he cannot help but be taken aback.

 

Leia is ten years old. The Imperial Senate has just passed a bill authorizing automatic overrule of sovereign planetary governments if the Empire deems that the threat of “insurgency” is present.

 

Bail supports this bill, because of course he does. He has a rebellion brewing; he can’t draw attention to himself now.

 

Leia is pouting and raging and crying and she doesn’t understand because he can’t tell her, not yet. Between hiccupping sobs she spouts off political ideology more sound than half the _sleemos_ in the Senate, talking about peace and warrior culture and the importance of sovereignty and when she gets the air to breathe, the taxes that will have to go up to uphold the new policy. Bail thinks distantly that he should be surprised by her eloquence, her vivacity, but, well. To be precocious – and to care too much – is in her blood.

 

*****************************************************************************

 

Leia is fifteen. Bail does not know where she has disappeared to this time, and he –

 

“Senator Organa!” says a playful voice behind him, and the voice is young but before he can remember why that’s important he turns, and –

 

and –

 

The woman smiles back at him, with a headdress he would know in his sleep, the tall bun with the bracketed basket ornament and the Nabooan half-moon resting on top. The voluminous navy and purple dress falling to the floor – the brown hair and dark eyes – the short stature –

 

“P – “ the name is on his tongue, but his voice dies, because the headdress is crooked. It is never crooked – how could it be –

 

“Father?” Leia slowly comes into focus in front of him, her tone worried. She has said his name more than once.

 

“My apologies,” he says, defaulting to polite Senator because the breath has been knocked out of him, on seeing the living ghost of the woman who was his sister in all but blood.

 

“Sorry – “ she says nervously, knowing something is wrong. “I was looking through old trunks, and I found this dress, and Maia and Thea helped me put it on – “

 

The handmaidens’ names were a tribute; they feel like a cruel joke.

 

“It’s all right,” he manages. “They’re yours.”

 

“They are?” she asks, her face lighting up. She takes it at face value and babbles off, clearly excited. “There were other outfits too, in there, I loved them – “

 

Bail remembers that trunk, remembers packing it in a haze of grief, Breha’s firm hand on his back keeping him steady.

 

“ – white tunic, it was really torn up, but I’m having a replica made to my size, it was short for _me_ , can you imagine? And – “

 

The trunk had been brown, and wooden as Bail had felt. The Senate dress and headdress he had seen every day for years of his life had been lying discarded on the bed, uncharacteristic of its owner, and he had taken it, unable to put it through the recycler –

 

“ – and an absolutely _adorable_ brown one, the waistline was weird, I think it might have been maternity, but that one was fine if a little burned in some places – “

 

The word _burned_ brings him back and suddenly he can smell the afterbirth. “Not that one,” he says, his voice sharper than he means it to be.

 

Leia looks startled, but there must be something in his tone. “All right,” she says, and they don’t speak about it again.

 

*****************************************************************************

 

Leia is five years old, and sometimes Bail’s ghosts can scare him.

 

The other girl has a bloody nose and two black eyes and a sprained wrist; Leia has nothing but some split knuckles and scratches.

 

“You kicked her while she was down, Leia,” Breha is explaining. “That’s never all right.”

 

“I was mad!” says Leia, crossing her arms and pouting as cutely as she can. It will not work this time, because Bail is too afraid of what might lie inside of his daughter.

 

“Anger is never an excuse, Leia,” he says sharply. Her eyes grow big in her face; he has never spoken to her like this. “Never. Do you understand? You cannot let your anger get the best of you. It’s – “ dangerous, he wants to say – “unbecoming, for the princess of Alderaan.”

 

“But she hurts Maia!” Leia summons up her anger again. “She calls her mean names, I had to! And besides, she hit me first! You guys tell me that I has to make a stand. So I did.” She pouts again. So her anger was protective, Bail thinks wearily. Well, so was _his_.

 

“You hurt her, Leia,” says Breha, with the right words, as always. “Look at her. Don’t you think she had a best friend, too? How do you think that made her feel?”

 

Leia looks taken aback, like she hadn’t thought of that before. “She – she’ll be – sad,” she says slowly, and her eyes widen. “Like me.”

 

“Yes,” says Breha gently. “Like you. You made her sad, like she made you sad. Is that a good thing to do?”

 

“No,” says Leia, chastised. “Sowwy.”

 

“Not to me,” says Breha, and Leia gets up to apologize to the girl. Her anger is gone for now, but Bail cannot say that his fears are eased.

 

A hand touches his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” says his wife, radiant and strong. “She has us to guide her.”

 

“And she always will,” he vows. “She needs us.”

 

“Like we need her,” Breha says, and she’s right, of course. They do.

 

*****************************************************************************

 

Leia is twelve and they are on Christophsis, officially on a mercy mission but unofficially on Rebel business. Bail thinks Leia knows, but she hasn’t yet asked, so he isn’t sure.

 

The mission goes south, far quicker than Bail is comfortable with with his daughter at his side, but his men are reliable. They find a crystal-cavern-turned building, tall and pointed, on the inside of the old capital, and his men begin to set up camp.

 

When Bail returns from updating Mon on the change in plans, he finds Leia arguing with the Captain of the Guard.

 

“I told you, I don’t know why, I just _know_ – “

 

“What’s going on?” Bail asks.

 

“Tell him, Father,” says Leia. “We can’t set up camp here. There’s something wrong with it.”

 

“Wrong?” he asks, concerned. “Did you see something?”

 

Leia looks frustrated. “No, that’s – I can’t explain it. Just a bad feeling. It’s old, but it’s there – makes me feel kind of sick – “ Her eyes go far away.

 

“A bad feeling,” he says, slowly. Leia nods. He remembers a starved desert and cursed rain, and trusts her. “Move out,” he says to his Captain.

 

“But sir – “ he begins to protest, appalled. Bail gives him a look, and he swallows his objections.

 

They are ambushed the next morning, anyway. Bail gets a shoulder wound; Leia is only shaken. They have not been home for twelve hours before she has picked out a blaster of her own.

 

*****************************************************************************

 

Leia is fourteen and in the cockpit of her first Starfighter. Bail’s not nervous. He’s _not_.

 

He’s no slouch of a pilot himself, so he’s behind the thrusters of another fighter, ready to follow her up into space. “Ready, darling?” he asks her, checking his nav-computer.

 

“Ready,” says the voice through his comms, made deeper by interference. “Let’s go, Artoo!” Bail’s breath catches in his throat, because the phrase – and the voice – stirs his memories of old holofilm propaganda, of a friend in exile on a planet of sand –

 

Leia’s Starfighter is in the air. “Coming, Father?” He takes the challenge in her voice for what it is, and zooms to follow.

 

Predictably, she has no trouble. Her fighter swoops and swirls circles around his, and he’s not sure he’s said a sentence without the word “careful” since she found her footing.

 

When they get back on the ground, she pulls off her helmet, laughing and invigorated, babbling about thrusters and hyperdrives and the newer models she wants to try out.

 

“You ever seen a podrace, Father?” she asks, eyes bright. “I bet I could do one of those. It felt like – you know, like I could see the angles before I took the turns, weird, huh? That would be useful in a podrace, wouldn’t it?”

 

“Podracing is illegal, Leia,” he says, before she gets any ideas.

 

She droops. “So you’ve never seen one then?”

 

“No,” he says, far away. “But I’ve heard stories.”

 

Breha dies in an attack a year later, while piloting their royal shuttle. Leia and Bail survive because they are sitting in the back. While Breha tries to outrun the flak from heat-seeking missiles, they are thrown free into an escape pod. Leia can’t enter a cockpit after that.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, her hands shaking. “You know that bad feeling from that cave on Christophsis? It’s like it’s here, too, but I can’t get rid of it. It doesn’t matter where I’m going it’s just – I can’t pilot. Not anymore.”

 

Bail knows what the bad feeling is – _getting the better of you, your emotions are_ , runs hysterically through his head – but he can’t make her fight it. He may be as Force-sensitive as a dead wampa, but he remembers Obi-Wan’s nightmares on Zigoola.

 

“It’s all right,” he says gently. “You don’t have to fly if you don’t want to.”

 

She shakes and buries her head in his chest, and Artoo gives a forlorn little beep. She doesn’t pilot a ship again.

 

*****************************************************************************

 

Leia is sixteen and attending her first Rebel gathering, right on the heels of her first address to the Imperial Senate. She has questions but they are thoughtful; she is a product of the two brightest minds and faithful hearts of the old Republic, and it shows.

 

There is a row of holograms on the wall, representing the founders of the rebellion. Mon Mothma, years younger and lighter; Bail himself, stressed by worry and the certainty of trouble brewing beneath the surface, and –

 

Leia stops in front of a portrait of a brown-haired woman, plain but for the forest-green cloak and silver headdress she wears.

 

“Who’s she?” she asks casually, and Bail does not know what to tell her.

 

“Oh,” says Mon, oblivious. “Padme. Or, rather, Senator Amidala of Naboo.”

 

“Naboo?” Leia is surprised. “I didn’t know Naboo had senators.”

 

“She was a queen before that,” continues Mon, “during the blockade of Naboo.”

 

“They didn’t talk about this in Imperial History,” says Leia, dryly. “She seems important.”

 

“She was,” says Mon. “She was the guiding spirit of the Republic. When she died, the Republic fell with her. They won’t tell you that in any Imperial-sanctioned class. Besides, as you might guess, she was a bit of a troublemaker.”

 

Understatement, Bail thinks, but he still cannot speak. He should tell her, he should –

 

“Father?” Leia asks him, carefully. “Senator – Amidala, how did she die?”

 

Bail meets her eyes and knows she has put together the pieces. Not all of them, he knows, but some. _In childbirth_ , he wants to say, but that is a secret still too dangerous to be shared. So instead, he says, “Darth Vader.”

 

Leia nods like she expected it, her eyes darkening. “We need to bring him down.”

 

Privately, Bail agrees, but biologically, Darth Vader is – well. He cannot bring himself to encourage her hatred with Padme’s picture right there ( _there is still good in him, there is still -_ ), so he says, “Never judge a person without hearing their story, Leia. Keep that in mind.”

 

She looks at him, shocked, but he cannot meet her gaze. “Let’s keep moving,” he says, and brings her to a star holomap. “Tell me how our forces should attack.”

 

She looks at him, but, miraculously, holds her tongue. “Well,” she says, turning to the map, and Bail watches the whole room come to rest around her as she begins to live up to her names – all of them.

 

*****************************************************************************

 

Leia is thirteen. The “bad feeling” moments have been increasing, growing stronger. Once Bail finds her subconsciously levitating half the objects on her desk as she does her homework. He talks with Breha and then they talk to her –

 

“We know a person who may be able to train you to control your abilities,” Breha tells her.

 

“Control?” she asks. “What do you mean?”

 

“To use it,” Bail says. “Consciously, to help people. Like you would with your blaster, or your speeches in the Junior Senate.”

 

Leia purses her lips, and then, choosing her words carefully, says. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

 

“What do you mean?” asks Bail.

 

“Well,” says Leia, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s like the Empire – they control federal and planetary government, and business, and communications, and the military. It’s too much. If I learned how to use this…” she trails off, her gaze far away. “I’m already going to be a politician, and use a blaster, and hopefully command Rebel forces, you know? If I had this on top of all that, it would be too much. No matter how many people I could help. And sometimes,” she blushes, “this will sound weird, but sometimes, I feel like that’s not – not meant for me. Does that make sense?”

 

  
_Yes_ , Bail knows. “Sort of,” he tells her. “But it’s your decision.” Leia nods at him, firmly, and he doesn’t question it.

 

He won’t pretend he’s not relieved, but more importantly, he’s _proud_ of his daughter. To give up power so thoughtfully, calmly, without any qualms – that’s not the Skywalker in her, nor the Amidala. It’s Organa, through and through.

 

*****************************************************************************

 

Leia is eighteen, and she does _not know how to let this go_.

 

“For the last time,” Bail tells her, finally raising his voice. “You may not come and meet Fulcrum. Their identity is secure for a reason, and I won’t have you violating my terms with them.” There’s another reason, of course, but he can’t tell her that. He can’t tell either of them.

 

“Why not? If I could communicate with them as well, Rebel operations would be more efficient. You’re retired, Father. If you – “

 

“No,” says Bail, and he is past wondering which parent gave her this stubbornness. (He suspects, sometimes, that it may have been all four of them.)

 

He’s not sure why he’s surprised when he arrives at the arranged meeting and Fulcrum is sitting in a booth, with Leia across from her, gesticulating furiously. Fulcrum is watching Leia’s face more than listening to her words; Bail can tell.

 

He slides in next to his daughter, and she stops abruptly.

 

“Bail,” says Ahsoka, carefully. “You didn’t tell me – “ she swallows, trying to find her words. She has clearly figured it out; some Force-saken trick he doesn’t understand. “You didn’t tell me there was a daughter.”

 

Bail nods, because it is all he can think of doing. “We don’t advertise her existence, for her own safety, which is why she _should not be here_.”

 

“It’s not a big deal, no one’s even noticed,” Leia defends automatically. She is studying their faces. “What’s going on here? You two know something you won’t tell me.”

 

“It’s not important right now,” says Bail, and braces for a fight.

 

True to form, Leia opens her mouth – and then, frowning, closes it again. “If you say so.”

 

Bail stares. Her sudden reticence – her control of her temper – has become steadily more frequent in the past year.

 

Leia notices his curiosity, and looks away. “What,” she says, “I can’t learn to control myself sometimes?”

 

“Not on important things,” says Bail automatically, and Ahsoka snorts. “What’s going on?”

 

“You’ll laugh,” challenges Leia.

 

“Try us,” says Ahsoka, leaning forward. “I want to hear this.”

 

Leia looks to him; he nods. “Well,” she says, “this will sound silly, but – there’s a boy.”

 

Bail doesn’t know how to react. “A boy?”

 

“Yes,” says Leia, face steadily getting redder. “A boy. Not – in real life though.”

 

“An imaginary boy,” clarifies Ahsoka, the corners of her mouth twitching. Leia glares.

 

“Yes, an imaginary boy,” she continues. “Blonde, blue-eyed. Sometimes I can hear him in my head. He’s – important, I think. And certainly calmer than I am. He tells me to relax.”

 

“Blonde, and blue-eyed?” says Ahsoka. “Dark blonde, or – “ Leia looks startled at her sudden interest, and Bail intercedes less-than-tactfully. He doesn’t want to get her hopes up.

 

“You know,” he says, cutting her off. “We almost adopted a boy.”

 

“A boy?” repeats Ahsoka, frowning.

 

“Yes,” he says. “Blonde and blue-eyed. Or at least I think, he was too young to really tell. Same age as Leia. We almost chose him, but we wanted a daughter. Leia reminded me, just now.”

 

The excuse is feeble. Leia is suspicious, but Ahsoka understands immediately. “Where’d he end up?” she asks, anything but casual.

 

“Tatooine, I think,” he says, equally nonchalant. “With some redheaded man.”

 

Ahsoka goes still in shock, but recovers quickly. “Anyway,” she says, clearing her throat, as though suddenly remembering her surroundings. “The intel. Right. Word has it the Empire’s developing a missile with greater firepower than we’ve ever seen…”

 

Later, they are on their way back to Alderaan, in separate shuttles.

 

“Father,” Leia’s voice crackles over the comms. “Did Fulcrum know my parents?”

 

Bail sighs. “Yes,” he says. She must hear the pain in his voice, because she doesn’t press him. She doesn’t ask about the boy in her head, either. He tries not to think about it, or to feel the weight of his fifty-four years pressing on him from behind, and angles his fighter for home.

 

Their fight is getting desperate; he can feel the Empire closing in. Bail decides, right there, that enough is enough. It is time, he thinks, to bring in the players who left so long ago – and to defeat the Empire and the Sith: this time, for good.

 

*****************************************************************************

 

Leia is nineteen and he is sending her on a diplomatic mission.

 

It is not, in fact, a diplomatic mission.

 

She is going to Tatooine, he explains, to meet an old friend of his. She has to find him. He’s their only hope.

 

“He was a General?” she asks. “A General of the Old Republic? Do you think he’ll really want to help us?”

 

He does not know how to answer that question. “That’s not my story to tell,” he says instead. “Now, don’t be nervous,” he says, because strangely, this girl who stood up to Palpatine himself last month is skittish about meeting one of her newly-discovered idols.

 

“Don’t suppose you’d have any advice?” she asks him.

 

“Don’t try to out-snark him,” he says, immediately. She raises an eyebrow. “He’s had more practice than I have at snapping back, and I think that says something.”

 

“Fine,” she says, deflating.

 

Then - “You can ask him about your father,” he says, taking the plunge. She is still. “He knew him, and grieved his – his loss.” Leia is tense, but nods.

 

“Finally, he’ll challenge you to a game of sabacc, for old times.”

 

“Sabacc?” she says. “With the fate of the Rebellion at stake?”

 

“Yes,” he says, smiling as he goes back to a simpler time – a dinner party, two Jedi, two senators, and laughter – “and for my sake, you’d better beat him.”

 

She smiles back despite herself. “I love you, Father,” she says seriously.

 

“You as well, my darling,” he says, and she steps into the shuttle. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Some events referred to are from Clone Wars: Wild Space by Karen Miller, which details the mission where Obi-Wan and Bail become friends. I would defs recommend it - Obi-Wan/Anakin/Padme are HEARTBREAKING skirting around each other immediately after Geonosis and beyond, esp Obi-Wan and Padme, and Bail is just lololing on the outside like 'are obi-wan and padme doing it??? this tension feels sexual but who knows' and its just really entertaining. 10/10 go read


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